Blake Lively shared a personal story of months of sexual harassment on set, and it shows how Hollywood ignores the issue

Blake Lively reveals she was sexually harassed for three months on a project.

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Mike Coppola/Getty

With the revelations in the past week of
decades of alleged sexual harassment and assault by Harvey
Weinstein of women in Hollywood, many actresses are opening up
with their own experiences - not just with the disgraced movie
mogul, but with others in the industry.

In a story the Los Angeles Times ran Thursday, actress
Blake Lively opened up for the first time about being sexually
harassed by a makeup artist for three months on a project she
worked on.

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"He was saying things inappropriately, insisting on putting my
lipstick on with his finger," Lively said. "I was sleeping one
night on location and I woke up and he was filming me. I was
clothed, but it was a very voyeuristic, terrifying thing to do."

Lively quickly reported the person to the producers on the
project, but nothing was done, she said.

"Finally," she said, "after three months of complaining, they
called me into my trailer and said, 'We need to talk to you.' I
thought, 'Well finally, they're going to do something about this
man who I had to have touching me all day.' And they said, 'Your
dog left a poop behind the toilet in your dressing room and our
janitor had to pick it up. And this is very serious and we can't
have this happen again.'"

Lively finally took the harassment issue to her lawyer. An
investigation was conducted, and the makeup artist was removed
from the project, according to the LA Times. However, it doesn't
seem to have hurt that person's career.

"Our unit production manager wrote him a letter of recommendation
because nobody wanted there to be bad blood," Lively said.

The epidemic of sexual harassment in the entertainment industry
goes back to the early days of the business, and though the
phrase "casting couch" - actresses advancing their careers by
being coerced into sleeping with or being sexually assaulted by
people with power - is thought to have disappeared with the
evolution of the enlightened times we live in today, in actuality
it's just become a better-kept dirty secret.

The Weinstein scandal has revealed women (and men) in the
business are still being harassed.